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- Title
When Lacan Met Dali: Lacan's "Paranoid" Reading of Saussure's Theory of the Sign.
- Authors
Constantinidou, Despina-Alexandra
- Abstract
The starting point of this paper, the extent to which Lacanian psychoanalytic theory is indebted to Saussurean semiotics, is a well-established field of study. In fact, most critics agree that it was Jacques Lacan's mis-reading of Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of the sign that determined Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and its approach to cultural texts. The present paper offers a theoretical and historical reasoning behind Lacan's mis-reading of Saussure's views about the nature of the signifier within a semiotic system, arguing that his interaction with Salvador Dali in the 1930s played a decisive role in the use of structural semiotics for the proclaimed "return to Freud". The concept of paranoia, the delirium of systematic interpretation of reality, served not only as common ground between the interwar work of the young psychiatrist and the surrealist artist, but essentially informed Lacan's reading of Saussure. Thus, research into Lacan's early writings and Dali's 1930s art sheds new light on the origins of the "primacy of the signifier".
- Subjects
PARANOIA in art; PSYCHOANALYSIS; LACAN, Jacques, 1901-1981; SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de, 1857-1913; DALI, Salvador, 1904-1989
- Publication
Gramma: Journal of Theory & Criticism, 2012, Vol 20, p237
- ISSN
1106-1170
- Publication type
Article